Fractions
by hushedgreylily
Summary: By popular demand, family oneshots in the canon of 'A half of the whole' (but no need to have read that). Snippets of the life they should have had.
1. Only One Minute

**FRACTIONS**

**Snippets of the life they should have had.**

**Family oneshots of varying lengths in the canon of 'A half of the whole' (but no need to have read that - Nikki and Harry were in a relationship when Harry left for New York, Leo dying brought him back, he proposed to Nikki and they got married the following summer. Their son, Joshua, was both a little over a year later). **

**Lots of happiness, cute children, and all the H/N.**

**Disclaimer: Actually, more of this belongs to me than usual, being straight out of 'A half of the whole'. So while the BBC's characters don't belong to me, the situations they're in now do, and Joshua is entirely mine.**

**Spoilers: What happened in A Greater Love might get mentioned, because it played a big part in what happened in 'A half of the whole', but that's old news now.**

**Only One Minute**

_October 2015_

Fatigue reading in the new creases around her eyes, Nikki sets the little boy down in his crib ever so gently. It's a moment of absolute uncertainty, the fear that he might wake again when she's just spent the last forty minutes feeding him, burping him, and pacing up and down the nursery with him, not running on very much sleep herself. Joshua doesn't like sleeping for long, as a rule, the last six days have taught her, since they've been home. So every last second counts right now – she never could have imagined how much she'd value silence.

She practically tiptoes into her bedroom, in utter terror of making the slightest sound. As she slips under the covers next to her husband he slides an arm loosely around her in his coveted half-asleep state. She smiles slightly as he buries his face into the crook of her neck.

"He… 'sleep?" he whispers, words not quite reaching sense, eyes not opening.

"Finally." She breathes, pulling his arm around her shoulders. "He doesn't like normal sleeping hours, your son…"  
>She feels the slight rumble of his laugh behind her. "He's my son when he's screaming, is he?"<p>

She raises an eyebrow, rolling over to face him, pressing her lips to his almost half-heartedly, in her already semi-unconscious state. "He's your son when he's screaming." She agrees, smiling slightly as her eyes drift closed. "And now he's asleep…. So he's my son… probably for no more than half an hour…"

His lips pressing against her scalp, his face in her hair.

"Go to sleep." He whispers, "I'll take the next shift."

She shakes her head slightly. "There's none of my milk left in the fridge… You can have tomorrow night…"

She thinks she feels a smile against her skin. "Tomorrow night…" he whispers, "I'll do all night tomorrow night…"

Despite everything, despite feeling like she's about to slip into unconsciousness any moment, despite how tired and teary and overwhelmed she's feeling at the moment, she tilts her face up to his.

"I love you. Don't you ever forget that."

Her eyes drift close and sleep sucks her in before she sees his smile, hears his reciprocation.

* * *

><p>Screaming wakes her next, and this time, there's no sign of life from Harry's side. He must be sleeping deeply, because Joshua's got a set of lungs on him. She staggers out of bed and into the nursery, noticing the clock as she passes, horror washing through her as she realises she's only been asleep for forty minutes. She lifts the still tiny little boy out of his crib, letting his mouth find her breast easily; the immediate quiet washing over her like a wave of something wonderful. He only has a short drink, and then he pulls away gently, his tiny little mouth opening in a yawn.<p>

"I'm tired too, sweetheart…" she presses her lips to his forehead as his dark blue eyes are slowly closing – they look heavy. "I love you more than you'll ever know." she whispers, daring to set him gently against the sheets in his crib again. "My beautiful boy."

She skulks back to her bed, a slight defeatist slump to her shoulders. She has a funny feeling she's not going to be getting much sleep at all for the foreseeable future.

Harry's still sound asleep. Jealously, she slides carefully between the sheets, careful not to wake him.

Her eyes are closed almost before she hits the pillow, and she's dreaming.

Her dreams are of a fair haired little boy running around in the garden with his father, words gabbling out of his mouth and slightly more normal sleep patterns followed. It's strange, even in her dreaming state she realises that not that long ago, that was just a dream, just a wish.

Now it's a future.

* * *

><p>Joshua sleeps for an hour and a half, this time.<p>

**Hope you enjoyed. Would love to hear what you think, give me two minutes for a review if you've got two minutes! More will be posted, intermittently!**


	2. Party Hat

**Disclaimer: Actually, more of this belongs to me than usual, being straight out of 'A half of the whole'. So while the BBC's characters don't belong to me, the situations they're in now do, and Joshua is entirely mine.**

**Spoilers: What happened in A Greater Love might get mentioned, because it played a big part in what happened in 'A half of the whole', but that's old news now.**

**Party Hat**

_August 2016_

Nikki sinks into the sofa with Joshua on her lap, letting out a huge sigh.

"When am I going to stop being tired all the time, little man?" she asks her son, smiling, tilting her head to one side slightly. They've just got home from Jack's birthday party – his new girlfriend, a no nonsense solicitor called Eve, had prepared a lovely three course meal for the little makeshift family they've thrown together over the last few years: Nikki and Harry, Jack, Clarissa, Thomas Chamberlain and his wife, and most recently, Josh. They'd had a lovely evening - especially since she's been off work it's been lovely to see the people from work in a different setting – a reminder they're all _people, _first, before they are pathologists. In the past year, staying out any later than eight o'clock has had her ready to fall asleep, and glancing at her watch, coming home at five past ten tonight practically makes them nocturnal. She sighs. Josh looks slightly bemused but starts playing with one of his mother's loose blonde curls absent mindedly. Nikki's smile widens a little at the expression of pure concentration on his face and her eyes drift closed.

When Harry steps into the living room, he can't help stopping for a moment, purely to smile.

Nikki's slumped, sat on the sofa, snoozing, and Josh is contentedly fiddling with her hair. Harry gives himself a little frown – he's open minded, he hopes his son becomes whatever he wants to be, but he'd really rather that wasn't a hairdresser. Then he smiles to himself, walks over and nudges his wife lightly, watching her eyelids flicker open.

"You'll be complaining about your neck no end tomorrow if you stay like that for more than five minutes."

"Go away." She pouts slightly, closing her eyes again. "Josh and I are sleeping."

He reaches out, smirking. "You've still got a party hat on." He laughs, pinging aforementioned hat onto her head, making her frown a little.

"Maybe I like the party hat."

He shakes his head. "Blue with yellow and red spots has never been your colour. Anyway, you can't sleep in a party hat."

She slides the cardboard coil off her head, and suddenly Josh is reaching for it, fascinated by the colours. Harry smiles and slips it onto the little boy's head, but it's far too big and slips down over his eyes. With the satisfaction only an eleven month old can find, Josh pushes it back to let it fall again with a cheeky giggle.

Nikki gives a small smile. "You've got a party hat, Josh." She whispers, and he laughs slightly louder. With a renewed burst of energy she lifts him in her arms and heads through to the bathroom. "You can't wear it in the bath… and we need you bath-ed and in bed, little man, before Mummy falls asleep in her party hat…"

Harry smiles to himself as they exit the room, Josh still finding priceless humour in the party hat on his head. It's the small things like that that make him stop. It's the tiny things like that, Josh's slightly demonic sounding giggle, the smile he watches his son bring on his wife's face, how comfortable and _right _Nikki's always looked with Josh on her hip… the small things like that make him pause for a moment and just breathe in. Because everything's perfect, where he is now, and he wouldn't change one bit of it.

* * *

><p>About half an hour later, he's easing his son into the cot. Nikki bathed him and bid him goodnight, and he's got the task of getting him off to sleep tonight, though he's not too worried, not tonight, the little one's tired.<p>

He presses his lips to his son's forehead gently, taking a deep breath and breathing in that fresh, clean smell.

"Night night, Walnut." He breathes – that nickname's stuck, though he keeps it quiet; Nikki thinks it sounds ridiculous and worries that Josh might suddenly start thinking that's his name. And that would be a hard one to rectify. "Sleep well."

His son frowns slightly, his eyelids drifting as if he's fighting in the last few moments before falling asleep.

And then, completely unexpectedly and leaving his father staring at him in absolute shock, Josh says his first words.

"Party hat."

**Hope that made you smile! Would love to hear what you think!**


	3. Unimaginable

**FRACTIONS**

**Snippets of the life they should have had.**

**Family oneshots of varying lengths in the canon of 'A half of the whole' (but no need to have read that - Nikki and Harry were in a relationship when Harry left for New York, Leo dying brought him back, he proposed to Nikki and they got married the following summer. Their son, Joshua, was both a little over a year later).**

**Lots of happiness, cute children, and all the H/N.**

**Disclaimer: Actually, more of this belongs to me than usual, being straight out of 'A half of the whole'. So while the BBC's characters don't belong to me, the situations they're in now do, and Joshua is entirely mine.**

**Spoilers: What happened in A Greater Love might get mentioned, because it played a big part in what happened in 'A half of the whole', but that's old news now.**

**Unimaginable**

_March 2017_

She didn't know what fear like that was, before. Sure, she'd been afraid, and very afraid, but not for anything that had ever been that precious. There wasn't any way anything could have been that precious.

She's feared for her own life (maybe more times than should be considered healthy) and she's seen other people's lives flash, figuratively, before her eyes, and sometimes, occasionally, they haven't come back into focus. They've ceased to exist, right before her eyes, in explosions.

In hindsight, she'll look at it and feel a whole new wave of pain for Leo, and not because of his life, but for what must have been burning inside him every day with the loss of Cassie.

* * *

><p>She's in the supermarket, Joshua newly toddling by her side, his dark hair in desperate need of a cut. She makes a mental note to herself to call Harry's barber when she gets home. Josh is staring, transfixed, at the pineapples, and she catches his hand in the last moment as he reaches out to touch one.<p>

"We don't touch what's on the shelf, Josh. And they're spiky, pineapples."

Her son simply repeats the word 'pineapple' with a smile on his face. She ruffles his hair gently smiling. She's sure everyone feels exactly the same way about their own children, but every new word her son learns, every new step he takes, she feels, cliché as it seems, like she's bursting with pride. She doesn't suppose it'll ever get old. She doesn't suppose Josh will ever stop doing things that delight her and her husband. Sure, he's already doing things that cause slightly less delight (he's getting quite fond of tantrums, and according to those few friends she has with children, from back at university, he's going through the 'terrible twos' slightly early), but he'll always be able to make her proud ten-fold to making her angry. She's sure of that.

They round the aisle into cheese and yoghurts, and an old, familiar face in that aisle shocks her for a second. Janet is browsing soft cheese, apparently trying to decide between garlic and chive flavoured, when she looks up, and gives Nikki a slightly tired looking smile.

"Hi." She breathes, slightly shaky, because Janet's someone that she was supposed to see next to Leo, and it's still all kinds of strange seeing her in a world where Leo no longer belongs, even four years on.

"Hi, Nikki." The other woman gives her a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, and Nikki realises they're both thinking about memories and worlds they used to live in. "How have you been?"

Nikki can manage a complete smile at that, if only for a second. "I'm good. This is-"

Her words are cut short when she looks to her side, where her son was, seemingly seconds ago, and there's no one there. The fear seeps like a sudden nausea through her body, and for a moment, she freezes. When she finally speaks, and she hears her own voice, it doesn't quite sound like her own.

"Where's Josh?" she breathes, "Did you see my son?"

Janet's gone similarly pale. "I… I'm sorry… I didn't.."

Nikki looks down the aisle, as if she's expecting Josh to materialise among the yoghurts. She can hear her heart thumping, and she knows in that moment she's never felt before and she's never going to feel again a fear like this for any other reason. Because her perfect little boy, all two feet six inches of her little dark haired angel, all of a sudden he's not by her feet. And she can barely have blinked, he's disappeared that easily. She feels the choke rise in her throat as she searches for some sort of answer to what she should do in Janet's eyes for a second, and then she turns on her heel and starts calling her little boy's name. Because she can't _think, _not really, for so many reasons. She'll start conjuring up images of someone stealing Josh, Josh running outside and in front of a lorry… she'll start telling herself no other mother would have allowed this to happen, she can't be cut out for this job after all, she's let her son down… She feels sick. She isn't _anything_, anymore, when she's not Josh's Mum. The last two years have changed her irreversibly.

She rounds the corner, calling his name, and crashes into the image of her son reaching out to touch the pineapples, with the exact face Harry pulls when he's trying to look at a difficult crossword clue.

She runs, all thought of sanity aside, and scoops her son off the floor, holding him as close as she can, _breathing _again. Her happiness and satisfaction and gratefulness wash over her in waves, because in case she hadn't known it before, she realises now that she has everything that's perfect in this world, all in the shape of that little boy in her arms. That little boy that's half her and half Harry and entirely his own little piece of the world.

"Mummy, you're squeezing!" she hears, and she loosens her grip on her son only slightly, burying her head in his hair for seconds, feeling the choke in her throat turn into tears.

As she pulls back, her son notices. "You're crying, Mummy. Grown-ups don't cry."

"I was worried about you." She breathes, and she sounds more like herself again.

"I'm sorry." He lisps as she puts him down. "I went to see a p.. a p.. a papple."

She wraps her arms around him again, not bothering to correct him on the tropical fruit in this moment.

There'll be plenty of time for that later. Time that for only a moment she thought she didn't have.

**Reviews always welcome!**


End file.
